John Frankenheimer knows a thing or two about thrillers, having directed some good ones in the '60s, including

"The Manchurian Candidate" and "Seven Days in May." His latest, "Ronin," shows the mark of a veteran hand and is entertaining in fits and starts. But he's forced to work awfully hard to distract us from seeing the picture for what it is: a mechanical and cheerless piece of work.

The story is almost defiantly old-fashioned, like a goosed-up "Mission: Impossible" plot: An international team of experts in covert action and weaponry is assembled by a mysterious organization to steal an equally mysterious suitcase. We are instantly in familiar movie territory: Gee-whiz tech-heavy plots will be hatched; there will be shifting alliances and betrayals among the plotters; and the whole business will be punctuated with shoot-outs and high-speed chases in picturesque settings.

The chief interest is watching Robert De Niro work in this context. He plays Sam, the American on the team, who, like the other conspirators, is tight-lipped about his past. In the beginning, we only know that he's well versed in the spy business, and needs money. De Niro gets the lion's share of what witty lines the film offers - Frankenheimer is a notoriously dour fellow - and there's some pleasure in watching him put his own spin on the action hero's macho quips. (And it doesn't hurt that David Mamet, writing under the pseudonym of Richard Weisz, had a hand in the screenplay.)

Sam and the other team members, including Frenchman Vincent (Jean Reno) and German computer wizard Gregor (Stellan Skarsgard), are brought together in Paris by an Irish woman named Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) and given stacks of cash to pursue a particular metal satchel. Die-hard filmgoers will instantly recognize this as Alfred Hitchcock's famous "McGuffin," as surely as if the word were stamped on the case. (A McGuffin is any object - a secret formula, an important letter - that exists solely to get a suspense plot moving and has no significance in itself.)

In pursuit of this satchel, the team engages in some spectacular action sequences. Among them: a meeting with the "villains" (we eventually hear murmurs about the Russian mafia and the IRA) near a Seine bridge explodes into furious gunplay worthy of a war movie; and a pair of extravagantly wild car chases (this from the director of

"Grand Prix" ) tear up the streets of Paris and Nice. The chases last so long you wonder if Frankenheimer is parodying this movie cliche.

The film offers a token humane gesture in the bonding of the Sam and Vincent, two grizzled old hands who learn to respect each other's experience and expertise despite their need to remain relatively anonymous. The possibility of this sort of old-school, stiff-upper-lip, brothers-in-arms relationship is about as warm a note as Frankenheimer strikes. It's intriguing to speculate about Mamet's contribution, if any, to this particular story thread, given his own attitudes toward manliness.

Ronin, by the way, refers to a group of shamed samurai who worked to avenge their murdered master, then committed ritual suicide. Their story leads a minor character to ruminate, darkly and briefly, about honor, but otherwise the title bears at best an oblique relationship to the action.